


Never Stray Too Far

by perpetuallyangryinsomniac



Series: Over Time & Stars [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Again, Don We Now Our Gay Apparel, Everyone Needs A Hug, I'm Sorry, Lance (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Quantum Abyss (Voltron), Road Trips, Saving the World, Sexuality Crisis, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), Use Your Words, Visions, as per usual, but spoilers ;), canon if dr Frankenstein had a go at it, kosmo is a prankster witch, lance is on it, lance just wants to celebrate christmas, no I will not elaborate, nooo don't update consistently your so sexy aha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-10-13 21:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20589359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetuallyangryinsomniac/pseuds/perpetuallyangryinsomniac
Summary: ‘Sure. This might as well happen. Aliens. Magic robots. Time travel. Why not?’‘Not like it’s the first time. You were a clone then, though.’‘It’s not exactly time travel. Just interactions with foreign time-space. The visions appear like memories—untouchable, unalterable. Until recently, we’d believed they’d stopped altogether.’ She looks accusingly at Lance.‘Recently, like—?’‘Last night,’ Keith confirms. He is decidedly not looking at Lance.Juggling ill-timed slices of the future, a race against an enemy they’re only pretty sure still exists, and a personal crisis or ten on top of holding together a team who needs a god damn holiday means Lance has got his hands full. Physics has taken another couple of hits, too.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> This is number two in the series, and you will be moderately confused at best if this is your starting point.
> 
> As for everyone else, as the kids say, "Ah, shit. Here we go again." (and thank you, welcome, mbdjhfbgj, etcetera.)

> ‘Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the Earth orbiting the Sun, or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time—whatever that may be—will tell.’
> 
> Stephen Hawking, _A Brief History of Time_.

**Finderscope**

Lance dreams, and the something-is-wrong radar he’s been honing over the last few years goes berserk.

Lance “Sleeps Through the Castle Alarm” McClain probably has the best sleeping habits on the team. Restful is his middle name, right after Sleeps Through the Castle Alarm. He doesn’t dream often, and never like this.

Dreams aren’t meant to be so jarring. It shouldn’t feel like his body took a step to the left and his mind two steps right. They’re meant to be filled with butterflies and Alluras.

Instead, the floor he sits on is white—if it is a floor, and he hasn’t finally been catapulted into the void. Light bounces at him with equal volume and intensity from all angles, so who’s to say? Shiro, maybe.

He gets to his feet, tracing his fingers over the soft material of the huge, bubbly Altean sweater he stole when they evacuated the castle. True to life, it tickles his skin. Weird.

Probably the least exciting dream he’s ever had, but still weird.

He takes a dizzy step, and there’s snow under his bare feet. He knows it’s snow, even though it’s not cold and he’s never actually technically seen snow before. On Earth, it hasn’t been cold enough to snow anywhere but the poles for years, and space is surprisingly snowless so far. Too many deserts.

‘Keith!’

Lance spins around, because that—that’s_his _voice.

And his face, his body, his Paladin armour.

He watches himself sprint and fall to his knees. And there’s Keith, flecked by still-falling snow and disturbingly still.

Lance lowers himself into the snow opposite his twin with greater caution than he usually applies to life-or-death situations.

He’s a little wary of clones now. Sue him.

The other Lance rolls Keith onto his back, listening for his breath. A slew of curses—Spanish, English, Altean—fly from his mouth. He yanks his gloves off and fumbles at Keith’s chest-plate, searching blindly for the clasps.

Lance shakes his head. The swell of nausea rising in him is unwarranted. It’s a freaky dream, sure, but still a dream.

The other Lance seems to struggle.

‘Let me,’ Lance offers, still a little amazed he has the agency to pick his words and actions.

His fingers phase through Keith’s side, and he balks.

‘What—?’

The other Lance manages to get the armour off, finally. ‘Okay,’ he breathes, squirming. ‘Shiro, where ever you are, you’re not funny.’ He locks his fingers together and pushes the heels of his palms into Keith’s chest in sharp jabs.

Lance leans a little, trying to catch his twin’s eye. ‘Can you hear me?’

The question goes unanswered. The other Lance just counts under his breath. Thirty pumps in, he yanks both his and Keith’s helmet off, tips his head back, pinches his nose and presses their mouths together. Keith’s chest inflates under his hand.

Lance blinks, hands wringing together. He knows he can’t help. Can’t provide support. He knows it’s not real.

He puts his hand on—maybe through, a little—Keith’s anyway.

Twin-Lance resumes chest compressions. ‘Come on asshole, I can’t do it for you.’ His voice is a snarl, but the fear in it is audible.

How long can the brain go without oxygen before it’s irreparably damaged? Lance doesn’t know. He did a first aid course every year at the Garrison, and he still doesn’t know. Not for the first time, he wishes he had Hunk and Pidge’s ability to retain every ounce of knowledge they come into contact with.

Thirty pumps. Another rescue breath. Both Lances lean in to listen for an exhale. Keith’s lips are dry and cracked.

‘Breathe, Keith,’ the other Lance huffs between compressions. ‘Breathe _now_.’

Lance sees him slowing down, urges him to keep going. His arms and shoulders must ache. 

There’s a flutter in his peripheral vision. Movement in Keith’s throat. The other Lance must see it too; he rubs his fingertips together before he feels for a pulse.

They can’t hear him, but he holds his breath anyway.

Lance barks a cross between a laugh and a sigh, arms wobbling. ‘There we go.’

But Keith stays stubbornly still.

Lance tries to tear his eyes away, but there’s only light and a halo of snow and two deathly still Paladins to look at.

It means the entire universe is trapped in those few seconds. His twin clenches his fists, one hand closed on Keith’s arm, the other gathering snow.

Keith inhales shortly. Exhales.

Inhales. Exhales.

They don’t relax until Keith’s eyelashes flicker. Twin-Lance allows himself one _(__one)_relieved sob, and then springs into action. He bangs his helmet against Keith’s, powdering snow over them both, and barks into their rims, ‘Atlas, this is Lance. We need evac as soon as possible. Keith’s alive, but he’s hurt. I’m—’

He takes a stuttering breath.

Lance watches a crease appear between Keith’s snow-flecked brows.

‘I’m alive too. Repeat, evac immediately. Just—please hear me. Over and out.’

He shoves his helmet on and then helps Keith into the other, probably trying but also failing to be gentle. His hands shake. He glances around. Lance does, too, but he can only see the snow beneath and around them.

‘You waking up, buttercup?’ Keith groans, soft and pitiful. He arranges his features into something resembling Shiro’s stern face. ‘If you don’t, I’m gonna have to carry you.’

Other than his head lolling to one side, Keith doesn’t show any sign he cares.

Puffing, the other Lance heaves their friend upwards. He staggers, probably exhausted from stress and performing chest compressions and whatever they were no doubt fighting before Keith took his ill-timed nap. His toes flick up showers of dusty snow with every step. It flies right through Lance’s shins, and then they walk through him, too.

He shudders. This has to be what ghosts feel like.

He turns and follows them. Twin-Lance’s steps are short, so it doesn’t take much catching up. He tries not to touch them again, though.

Keith’s fingers twitch. He taps the other Lance’s chest-plate. ‘I c’ walk,’ he murmurs, eyes still closed.

Lance grunts. In unison, both Lances scoff, ‘Sure you can.’

(Maybe he should be grateful only Keith showed up in person when all that time-travel stuff was going down, so long ago now. Dreams are more than weird enough for him; meeting himself for real would probably take years off his life.)

‘Lemme walk.’ He takes no action to remove himself from Lance’s hold.

‘We’re already here.’ He sets Keith down against a wall Lance can’t see. They must be inside a structure of some sort, because the falling snow halts abruptly. ‘I’ll be back.’ 

He turns back the way they came.

Lance crosses his legs and guards Keith. Uselessly, maybe, since he’s unarmed, in pyjamas, and, oh yeah, dreaming—but he likes having something to do besides just stare.

He doesn’t get many chances to look at Keith up close. He’s always coming or going, running to or running from. How often does Keith really sit still?

Lance reminds himself that he’s not going anywhere. Keith’s priorities seem to have swung since meeting is mom, so he’s sticking around for now. Until they reach Earth, at the very least.

Keith starts to sit up properly while the other Lance is gone. He doesn’t seem to remember his heart stopping. He just looks down at his armour-less chest, blinking.

Lance murmurs, ‘Have your eyebrows always been this—?’

Keith’s head snaps in his direction. Lance scuttles backwards, eyes wide.

‘Oh my god can you—?’

A pair of feet stomp off a sticky snow right in his lap. _In _his lap.

‘Lost my gloves,’ says the other Lance, dumping Keith’s chest-plate. ‘It snows fast here.’

Keith’s eyes follow him, not Lance. He’s still invisible, still an observer.

‘Hey, you okay? Dizzy? Broken?’

Keith puts his face in his hand, massages his temples. ‘Shh. Feel like crap.’

He sucks in a breath when Lance kneels beside him and angles his chin up with a gentle hand. His eyes open, wide and innocent.

It’s weird to see from the outside. Lance feels, ridiculously, like he’s intruding. It’s his dream and, technically, him. But this isn’t Keith and Lance. This isn’t how they look at each other; Keith’s lips parted in surprise, Lance’s eyebrows drawn in concern, frown soft. He kind of wants to look away, kind of wants to yell to break it up.

Then Lance shines his wrist-light directly into Keith’s eyes, which brings the world crashing back to normalcy.

‘Hey!’ He tries to jerk away, batting at the hand on his jaw like an angry kitten.

‘Stay still, would you? I’m making sure you’re not dying.’

‘By blinding me?’ He doesn’t move again, though. He just looks past the light and at Twin-Lance’s face.

‘Pupils contracting. Okay, so no hypothermia! That’s good.’ He touches his back, and Keith leans into the touch. ‘Your flight suit is drenched, though.’

Twin-Lance stands and moves past him, a yellow circle of torchlight swinging across their white background. It warps and moulds itself over shapes Lance can’t actually see. ‘I’d take off the top, if I were you.’

‘Of course you would,’ he grumbles, but he obeys. And, hey—it’s Lance’s dream.

He’s curious. That’s never killed anybody.

Keith looks ridiculously unlike the underfed kid he was a few years ago. His shoulders definitely weren’t that broad before he left the team. What, did he and his mom spend those two years curling iron and deep-throating protein?

Well. Probably. Is this how he really looks, though, or a product of Lance’s tired mind?

‘There are easier ways to get you naked.’

Lance gapes at that, wondering in what universe—even a dream universe—he would actually risk his life by saying something like that. On that note—in what universe does Keith brush over it without stabbing anyone?

This one, apparently. ‘Lance. What happened? What are you doing?’

‘Druid. Isn’t it always? It stopped your freaking heart.’ He stumbles, toe catching something that he can’t see in the assumed darkness and that Lance can’t see in the light. He clears his throat. ‘You’re lucky I’m a CPR expert.’

‘Oh,’ says Keith.

He shakes his head. ‘Anyway. I’m looking for something we can burn while we wait out the evac, or we’ll both freeze our asses off.’

‘Evac?’ Keith asks slowly. His features are somewhere between guilty and hopeful. ‘But the storm—’

‘It’s called false hope, Keith, and it’s all that’s keeping me—fuck!’

The yellow light disappears.

Keith jumps to his feet, swaying. ‘What?’ He steps forward with more confidence than he should in the dark. Maybe Galra have night-vision on top of teeth and claws. ‘What happened?’

‘’S nothing.’ Lance unfurls his arms from his chest, and the torch remerges. ‘My hands are just cold. Hurts.’

‘Lance—’

He turns his light on the ground. ‘Could you grab that?’

Keith bends, and as he does, the tiny block of material he’s reaching for phases into existence. All three of them inspect it closely, the present two hunched close. Two layers of film, one corrugated, the other smooth. Dark red scratches run down both sides. The square is barely the size of Lance’s palm, and only half as thick.

‘You think this’ll burn?’

‘Yup. It’s some kind of kindling. Saw the Sargent burning it.’ They give each other a look that conveys their shared disgust. ‘Don’t know how far it’ll get us, though.’

‘Right.’ Keith pins his shoulders back. ‘How are we lighting it?’

With a grimace, the other Lance summons his bayard. He hisses, his fingers loose around the grip of a white and red handgun _this _Lance has never seen before in his life, much less summoned.

Keith scowls. ‘Idiot! I could’ve done that.’

‘Nuh uh. Yours would incinerate our only fuel.’

_ Keith’s_gun? Since when?!

He huffs. Lance aims away from them; the blast just barely singes the corner, but it’s enough to start a gentle, deep red flame. They sit ever so slowly and place it between them.

‘Thank god,’ the other Lance says.

‘Thank _you_.’ Keith, shirtless and allergic to physical contact, wraps his arm around Lance’s shoulder. ‘Really, Lance. Thank you.’

Lance, for the first time, gets to see his own face as he lies. He sees the flash in his eyes, the way he sticks up his nose just a little. Damn it, is he this obvious in real life?

‘It was nothing, Keithy boy.’ He holds up his hands. They look a little pale. ‘Hope I don’t get frostbite, though.’

‘Stick them in your mouth,’ Keith says earnestly. Like the most ridiculous thing Lance has ever heard—including_leave the math to Pidge_—didn’t just leave his mouth.

Yep. This is the worst nightmare Lance has ever had, period. Including that one with the giant crab in loafers.

The other him seems to be following a similar train of thought. ‘Sorry, think I blacked out for a second. Come again?’

‘It’s the warmest part of your body.’

Both Lances give him a withering look, and he isn’t even freaked out at the synchronicity this time. More vindicated. It makes sense.

‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’

Keith rolls his eyes. ‘They’re your fingers. If you want to lose them, be my guest.’

Grumbling, Twin-Lance tugs off his helmet and jams all ten of his fingers in his mouth, laving his tongue over each one. Keith grimaces, but doesn’t retract his advice or his arm.

Lance looks at his own hands. Can he actually fit all of his fingers in his mouth?

He almost tries. Almost.

One Lance with no dignity is enough for this nightmare, though.

Said Lance sends Keith a challenging eyebrow raise. ‘Thurvibal ekthpert, my ath,’ he mutters.

Keith raises his brows right back. ‘What was that?’

He removes his hands from his mouth, a string of spit following them. ‘I said survival expert, myass.’

Keith just shakes his head. ‘Those were your words, not mine.’

Twin-Lance laughs but stops before he gets to his next joke. He sits there, jaw unhinged. ‘Wait,’ he says slowly, ‘is this—did we—?’

Confusion flashes over Keith’s face for less than a tick before he clues in. His gaze sweeps around. ‘We had a vision of this.’

He groans, ‘We should have known not to come to this freaking snow globe, then. Why do we keep doing this?’ He takes a breath. ‘Hello, past me,’ he sings, spit-covered fingers wiggling spookily.

He’s kidding. Probably.

But Lance’s heart jams in his chest. Which is only fair, really, because, like, what the fuck?

‘Don’t,’ Keith says.

Lance agrees vehemently, ‘Yeah, don’t!’

How his sleeping brain is pulling off this prank, he doesn’t know.

Keith squints at the space beside them, opposite to Lance. ‘I remember. I was standing right there.’ They both cock their heads up, like they can conjure a second Keith just by thinking it hard enough.

The other Lance waves. ‘Hello, past Keith.’ His head swings around, his eyes narrowed with scrutiny. He stops right where Lance is sitting—

Or near enough. He definitely still can’t see him.

‘I was there-ish,’ he says. And he’s not wrong.

Lance stands.

‘It’s a dream,’ he says aloud. He has to remind himself. His heart thumps painfully. He’s seen a lot in space, but somehow this feels just—

So, _so _wrong.

‘Where do you think—?’ Twin-Lance’s face screws up. ‘Aw, man. Your mom saw me give you mouth-to-mouth. That’s so weird.’

Keith scoffs, but the corner of his mouth shoots up. ‘Considering you saved my life—’

And then Lance is in his bed, upright before he’s even fully awake.

He paces his room. He has a lot of energy all of a sudden. Adrenaline, probably.

He smacks his temple with his palm, like he used to do to the tv remote. Smack the offending technology, make it work.

Why can’t he forget it? It should be fading away already. He remembers very few dreams past the initial waking seconds.

‘Go away,’ he says out loud.

It doesn’t.

‘Fine.’ He paces some more. ‘Fine.’

Maybe he’s going crazy, if he’s talking to himself now.

_ It was just a dream_. He stamps the words into his mind. Puffs out his chest. _You are twenty-one years old. It was a _dream.

He wouldn’t be this harsh with Shiro, he doesn’t think.

He slaps his temple again, and the answer comes to him.

‘Food,’ he cries to the empty room. Food fixes everything. Especially if there’s leftovers. Hunk, as usual, absolutely _killed _dinner last night. Not literally, although Hunk hunting for food would be a sight to see.

He pulls on his jacket. It’s not an overly cold planet—no snow—but he wants the extra comfort. He puts his slippers on, too, because he’d rather they have grass stains than go to the effort of putting on socks and trainers just to dig up a midnight snack.

The extra rooms in Red’s body aren’t overly large. There’s a closet filled to the brim with food goo, yet to be touched; they’re saving it for when they go long stretches without stopping. Lance skirts those in favour of real food. There’s a full bathroom—would have been nice to know about that earlier. A rudimentary healing pod—another piece of useful information Coran thought they’d “figure out on their own”. There’s a hallway, and there’s his makeshift bedroom. They couldn’t manoeuvre proper beds onto the Lions in such little time, so they have sleeping rolls piled high with blankets. Lance has a growing lump of dirty laundry, too, but it’s not a feature he brags about.

They had fifteen vargas to evacuate their home, and a lot of that time was dedicated to data collection and basic necessities. Almost fifteen hours to decide the most important memories from the better part of almost four years.

Lance is grateful he’s prone to photographing everything.

For the past few weeks the team has set up camp outside the Lions. This particular planet is host to some annoying creatures, though. Coran called them Deckribblers. Allura said the ladies of the court used to call them Braid Thieves because of their tendency to eat Altean hair in the night. Then she got all wistful, so Lance said that everyone but Keith should sleep inside. Keith crossed his arms. Shiro looked at the sky, like he was praying. Allura shook her head to hide her smile. Balance restored.

Lance yawns as he steps off the gangway, heading for the ring of chairs in the clearing formed by the Lions. All the food is still there, wrapped up.

He wipes his eye with a fist, and then jumps. He twirls violently to cover it. Recovery at its finest. ‘Jesus Christ!’

The two people he feels least like seeing right now sit at the ring of chairs, heads pulled together, twin sets of purple eyes turned on him.

Seeing Keith again sends the dream rushing back. He averts his eyes, and leaps for the food instead.

‘Lance,’ Krolia says diplomatically.

‘You’re awake,’ Keith adds.

‘Obviously.’ Lance doesn’t want to be rude, but he was kind of in the middle of freaking out and these two aren’t helping. ‘Wanna snack,’ he explains, hoping to soften the blow.

He doesn’t miss the odd look they share, chins tilted down, watching each other from the very corner of their eyes.

‘You okay?’ Keith asks, voice so soft and deep he almost misses it.

He scrambles to keep a hold of his food package. Bread which tastes like bread and soup which tastes like soup awaits him. (Hunk is a genius.)

‘Hm? Oh, yeah. Fine. Y’know.’ He lifts the package. ‘Snack.’ He cringes. Already said that, doofus_. _

‘You look shaken,’ Krolia says, face blank. Her son shoots her a warning look. Lance recognises it from the way dream-Keith looked at dream-Lance.

‘No,’ he says, the sound drawn out.

She raises an eyebrow the way only a disbelieving mother can. ‘Did you have a nightmare?’

No. Lance will not stand for this. A dream is a dream and dreams are _private,_thank you very much.

‘What? No!’ he squeaks, clutching the food to his chest. The Koganes swap another look. ‘I’m gonna go—bread. Eat my bread, now. Thanks. Bye.’

He whips around and strides back to Red.

‘Night,’ says Keith. Lance waves over his shoulder. He’s too lost in his own reassurances to do much else.

He feels better when he wakes up the next morning. Maybe the lingering emotions of the dream have dissipated. Maybe it was the bread.

Whatever it was, Lance is grateful. He can shake it off.

He sings in the shower.

When he sees the Koganes at breakfast, he doesn’t even stumble. He gives them his usual smile and digs into his not-cereal-but-close-enough-to-satisfy and actual-milk-curtesy-of-Kaltenecker-and-Lance. Like always, the Alteans eat theirs dry.

He feels Krolia watching him and thinks _your mom saw me give you mouth-to-mouth_, but he shakes it off.

He’s all good.

‘Alright guys,’ Shiro starts, stretching so far back his spine pops in multiple places. Keith cringes next to him. Pidge grins wickedly and cracks her fingers. Keith glares. Lance follows suit, snapping his neck to a demon-in-a-bad-horror angle. Hunk slaps him lightly, and nods at Keith. An alliance is formed. Coran looks more than a little worried. Shiro doesn’t even notice—or, if he does, he gracefully ignores it. ‘We’ve got a solid fourteen hours of flying ahead of us, so make sure you stretch your legs before we go. Lift off in one varga.’

They chorus their okays. Pidge is gone in a flash to who-knows-where.

Lance decides to get some actual exercise in. The emotional stress might be wearing off, but he still has a little residual energy from last night.

He catches Keith’s eye, and before he can stop himself, is saying: ‘Feel like getting your ass kicked this morning?’

Keith shrugs. ‘If that’s what you want to call it.’

The space wolf leaps to his feet, tail thrashing. That’s a yes, then.

They find a flat-ish space behind Black that isn’t in anyone’s way and walk a little further than they probably have to.

Keith isn’t exactly a master of communicative subtlety. Just because he looks his wolf right in the eye and asks in a faux-light voice, ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ doesn’t mean Lance is blind to what he’s doing.

Duh. Lance _invented _no-looking interrogations. Used to use them on Keith, actually, so this is a little insulting.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Frankly, the fearsome dog looks uncomfortable with the prolonged eye-contact, watching Lance fold his arms out of the corner of his eye instead. Keith continues to stare. ‘You said you were having nightmares.’

‘Um, _no_. Your mom said that. I was there for bread.’

Keith forgets to be awkward and shoots for stress-inducing, brows raising unevenly. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ which is something he only says when he knows he’s right, ‘but aren’t you always complaining that eating after eight will make you gain weight?’

‘That’s a _myth_.’ One he happens to believe. ‘And time is relative on space road trips! What d’you care, anyway?’

The wolf finally slips away and bounds off, so Keith says the next bit to the ground. ‘Sorry. Just—you could sleep through an attack from Zarkon.’ And did, once or twice, which he kindly doesn’t mention.

Lance is kinda glad Keith refuses to look at him. Sure makes it easier to gape shamelessly. Did Keith really offer him an apology, just like that? Without having it beaten out of him?

What the cheese happened on that whale?

‘I just miss my bed, okay? I love Red, but jeez. It’s hard to get comfortable on the floor.’

‘He’d let you sleep in the cockpit.’

‘She,’ Lance corrects gently. Keith’s face still falls.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. It’s been two and a half years since Lance has felt Blue’s presence outside Voltron. He’s piloted Red for longer than he ever did her, but damn it; he misses her. It’s like saying goodbye to first love.

Keith hasn’t flown Red in over four years.

It’s cruel to ask, but Lance has to know (in case it’s a _him_problem, in case everyone else is content, in case Blue just doesn’t and maybe never wanted him): ‘Have you spoken to her lately?’

He ducks his head. Now that he’s taller, it doesn’t do much to hide his face. ‘What do you think?’

Hearing it is—privately, guiltily—a relief.

It’s also one of the few times Lance is lost for words. What can he say? That kind of loss can’t be talked away.

Luckily, Lance has had an icebreaker tucked up his sleeve for weeks now.

He activates his bayard, and with a spark, summons his blade.

(He’s been waiting a while to brag about this, so he’s chuffed by Keith’s surprised look.)

He blinks, expression open now that he’s been caught off guard. ‘You have a sword?’

Lance spins it between his fingers. In another life, he could have been a great baton twirler. ‘For a couple of months. It’s an Altean broadsword. Same as King Alfor, apparently.’

Keith hums thoughtfully. ‘Must be a Red Paladin thing.’

Which sounds nice in theory, but, ‘You never had one.’

He nods. ‘I’m not the Red Paladin.’ And then his own black sword is drawn and he’s lunging.

Lance scrambles to block, and all at once he’s stuck on the defensive. He ducks, weaves, spins. He can’t gain ground.

Keith has him knocked to his ass in minutes.

‘Damn,’ he huffs.

Keith offers a hand to help him up, and he takes it gratefully. ‘You’re just not used to it.’ The corner of his mouth quirks up dangerously. ‘Or me.’

And—

Yeah. That’s a fair assessment.

He trips him another two times before Lance asks, ‘Dude, what the hell?’

It comes out less angry and more appreciative. He knows because Keith gives him a full-blown smile. ‘What?’

‘Have you always been this good, or did this come with the supersize? I kinda feel sorry for the Empire right now.’ He clicks his tongue. That sounds too much like a compliment. _Not _their usual battlefield banter.

Keith takes it in stride. ‘Lots of practice. Voltron, the Blade. Two boring years on a space whale.’

Lance must have hit his head, because he says to the real life, actual Keith, ‘Help me.’

Keith fish-mouths for a second.

Whoops. Too late to back out now.

‘Train me. I wanna, y’know.’ Lance tries to demonstrate. ‘Slash. Parry. Dominate. Whatever.’

Maybe Lance got a blow in at some point too, because instead of laughing him off the planet and out of the solar system—Lance, _Lance_, asking for help—Keith runs a thumb over the edge of his sword and says, ‘I trained the new recruits for a bit, with the Blades.’

Conveniently forgetting everything he just asked for, he repeats, ‘You? A teacher?’ Mister Short Fuse. Mister Has Never Given Helpful Instructions In His Life. Mister Oh So Personable.

Keith must read his mind, because he sighs, ‘Believe me, I know. Kolivan did, too. But I couldn’t actually go undercover for,’ he gestures to himself, ‘Obvious reasons. All I could do were infiltration missions, or assassinations, and there weren’t as many of those as you’d think, especially once the Lotor alliance happened.’ If he sees Lance wince at that, he ignores it. ‘Other than training and flying resources out to different bases, there wasn’t much else Kolivan trusted me with. And we were running low on qualified teachers, I guess.’

Lance wonders if he’s ever said that much, unprompted, in his entire life. ‘So, you didn’t have a massively terrible time with the Marmorites?’ He hopes it doesn’t sound too disappointed, like he’d been rooting for Keith to hate it there and come home.

Keith shrugs. ‘It was what it was. Don’t hunch so much, it’s making you stiff.’ And he lunges again.

This time, Lance actually manages to stay on his feet. They take a few swings at each other before Keith is spinning him around again, getting him to retreat, and Lance sees his opening. Keith pauses a little every few strikes, probably (definitely) for Lance’s benefit.

Lance does what he does best: he acts. Pants heavily in those short breaks. Readjusts his grip, his stance.

Keith doesn’t see it coming when he swings, ducks, block, wrestles, and then when Keith bounces back on his opposite foot, dives instead of resting. He yells, ‘_Ha!’_It’s not quite a battle cry but it’s close enough.

He gets to see first-hand what a battle-ready Keith really lookslike, and the shift makes it all the clearer how lazily he’s been handling the fight so far. He sees him sink lower, his heels lift, his hand dart out so his sword protects his whole body; sees his eyes go wide and then narrow, _yellow_, his pupils turn to slits while the bridge of his nose folds like a snarling dog’s.

His momentum carries him forward even as his mind tells him _wait no stop, _and luckily—so, so luckily—by some amazing accident, his blade catches Keith’s at just the right spot and neither of them are impaled as they go crashing to the ground. Keith lands hard on his back and Lance doesn’t manoeuvre his hands fast enough to catch himself. Keith hooks an arm around his shoulder and rolls them both as soon as they touch the velvety grass.

Lance flops, stares at the sky—blue, but not the same shade as on Earth—while Keith skitters away. They huff alongside each other for a moment.

‘Sorry,’ he says, the apology diluted by pride. ‘Guess you’re not used to me, either.’ He took down Keith, expert swordsman! And he _sucks!_

Keith moved further than he thought, his head on his knees a couple of feet away.

‘Hey, you okay?’ He puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder, and he practically leaps away. ‘Whoa—’

Keith turns his head sharply and wheezes, ‘Shiro.’

Lance doesn’t try to touch him again, but he does hover. Keith retracts when he moves closer. ‘Hey, it’s—’

‘Get Shiro,’ he snaps. Actually snaps, teeth and all.

He would be offended, but Keith is choking on his own breath and he looks terrified and—

Lance doesn’t know how to fix this, but apparently Shiro does.

‘Okay, I’m getting Shiro. We’ll be right back.’ He leaves his bayard beside Keith’s and runs for his life.

The camp is fairly quiet when he bursts into it.

‘Shiro!’ The man in question twists where he stands, bewildered by the tone. They run across the clearing to meet in the middle. ‘It’s Keith! I think he’s having a panic attack or something, I don’t know. He asked for you.’

He ushers Lance back the way he came. ‘Show me.’

The wolf is whining by Keith’s side when they get there, snuffling at his boot. Lance shoos him, and though he looks indignant, he moves off. Shiro crouches in his place, and waves Lance back like he just did to the damn dog. He fidgets to the side and jumps when Krolia appears next to him. She doesn’t look worried so much as distraught.

‘Keith, it’s Shiro. Look at me, kid.’

Lance sees him lift his head. His thumb is between his teeth, knuckle squishing his nose to the side.

‘Good. Breathe with me.’

He shakes his head, but Shiro repeats the words in the same soothing voice until he’s okay again. Or okay-ish. He flops onto his back and mumbles, ‘Thanks, Shiro.’ A pink mark circles the base of his thumb.

Shiro sits beside him, watching with a frown he’s obviously trying to hike into a comforting smile. The wolf sneaks closer, and Keith ambitiously tugs him into a hug.

Krolia murmurs, ‘We should go now.’ She sounds miserable enough that Lance believes her, even though he wants to help.

The urge to resist is strong, but at the Galra’s sharp look, he bows his head and follows her back to camp. She artfully dodges the overload of questions from the team, who remained behind on Shiro’s orders, and hides away in the Black Lion. By the time they turn on Lance, Pidge is all but foaming at the mouth.

‘What happened? Where’s Keith?’

Allura asks if everyone’s alright, hair already pulled into a bun, and Coran assumes a karate-esque pose. Hunk provides a solid weight to lean into, expertly diagnosing Lance’s frazzled appearance.

‘Everyone’s fine.’ Ish. ‘Keith just needed to speak to Shiro—’ Or literally anyone more competent than Lance, likely.

He’s a first responder in the war for the universe, and he panics when his friend—his leader—needs him.

He swallows. ‘Anyway, I think we’re gonna stick around a bit longer. Just a couple of vargas.’

A deep rumble shakes the ground, one they’ve all become attuned to since Keith took up the mantle of leader again. Black. He complains more with Keith in charge, although no-one dares acknowledge the correlation aloud.

The team turns to the Lion. Lance half expects him to leap to Keith’s rescue like the helicopter parent he is, but he seems content with brooding.

‘You sure?’ Pidge raises an eyebrow. ‘Grumpy doesn’t seem to approve.’

Grumpy offers no further comment.

Lance just shrugs. ‘I don’t call the shots, just assuming. Ask our fearless leaders.’

He wonders offhandedly if the title still applies.

‘Hunk?’

He jumps so high he nearly smacks his head. ‘Lance! Don’t sneak up on me! I have a dangerous weapon!’

The yellow bayard is sitting on the floor by Lance’s foot. He picks it up and swings it around one finger. ‘This dangerous weapon?’

‘Yes.’ He snatches it away. ‘What do you want?’

‘Lots of things.’

Hunk turns around again, shaking his head. His impromptu bedroom is full to the brim, like Lance’s, but much less chaotic. He folds (and refolds) ceremonial outfits he hasn’t worn in months and probably never will again on account of their being terrible, complicated, uncomfortable, etcetera. Why he saved them, Lance doesn’t know. ‘We don’t have time for you to pretend you don’t know exactly what you wanna ask. Just give it to me straight.’

Lance needs more build up than that. If he’s not a tapping, fidgeting, wiggling string of anxiety, what the hell’s the point?

He lies down flat on his back, and Hunk sighs. ‘Okay. At least help. Roll the socks.’

Lance groans, but he doesn’t have anything better to do. Plus, an Activityäprovides the opportunity to implement his classic move, no-eye-contact-interrogation.

‘Hey, buddy,’ he starts innocently, ‘what’s your take on CPR?’

‘Like, in general? As a life-saving tool? It’s okay?’

He pegs a sock ball at the back of Hunk’s head and misses by a mile. Good aim is his _whole thing_, for Christ’s sake! ‘I mean, like, the kissing bit.’

‘The—’ He turns slowly. ‘It’s not _kissing_. Like, at all. At all, at all.’

‘Oh.’ Lance grins, satisfied. ‘Okay.’

‘Okay?’

‘Yep!’

‘What’s the question, again?’

He waves a dismissive hand. ‘Don’t worry. I figured it out.’ It’s all fine; like Hunk said, it’s not kissing _at all_. Lance is onto bigger things, like preparing ammo for the impending sock fight.

Hunk keeps on staring, which really disrupts the surprise attack which will prompt said sock fight. ‘Context? Please?’

He considers his options. There’s always the chance that whatever Lance says will be used against him for banter; since Pidge isn’t here, he figures he’s a little safer. ‘I had this dream last night—’

Brows shooting straight up, Hunk cuts in, ‘A dream?’

‘Yeah?’ He summarises. Leaves out the meta bit and keeps the ridiculous awkwardness between dream-Lance and dream-Keith to a minimum.

‘Dude,’ Hunk says when he finishes, punctuating the statement with the slowest blink Lance has ever seen. ‘Are you into Keith?’

‘What?! No!’

‘Well—’

‘I was just saving his life!’

Hunk pushes his palms down in a soothing gesture, but fails to lower his own volume. ‘I’m just saying! That’s not a very platonic dream!’

‘Wha—you just said CPR isn’t kissing at all at all _at all!’_

‘Yeah, in real life! But dreams—that’s like, a life guard fantasy or something!’

At which point Pidge decides to present herself. ‘What the hell are you nerds yelling about?’

They fall silent. Look at each other. Lance’s eyes say _I trust you, buddy, this is between us, let’s keep it that way, _and Hunk’s say—

‘Lance tried to no-homo his way out of dreaming about Keith.’

‘Judas!’ He pegs another sock ball. It bounces off Hunk’s forehead because he ducks.

Pidge smirks like a cat who got the cream, the bird, and a million dollars. ‘Oh ho, I should’ve known. Rivalry! God, Lance.’

She doesn’t flinch at the sudden barrage of sock balls hailing down on her, even as she’s struck. She throws one back—Lance rolls and it hits Hunk, who grunts indignantly.

‘That’s not what happened! You don’t have the whole story!’

‘Don’t need it!’ she cackles. ‘You are the patron saint of crushing on authority.’

He leaps to his feet. She isn’t intimidated. ‘Nuh uh!’

‘He used to like Professor—’

‘Hunk!Did I _do_something to you?’

Pidge bounces into the room and snags a black shirt, balling it up and holding it above her head. ‘Keith,’ she moons, cradling the scrunched shirt in a dip, ‘I think you’re, like, the future!’

Lance screeches, abandoning his projectiles in favour of a tackle. Is nothingsacred?

Coran hauls them all outside not too long afterwards, although not before belly-flopping onto Hunk’s disgraced laundry pile and nearly smothering Pidge.

Thankfully, neither bully says anything when Keith rocks up—last, of course. All about the dramatic entrance.

He looks better than he did. His skin isn’t blotchy at all, his eyes aren’t red—what is his secret?

‘We’ve delayed long enough,’ he says gruffly. Hilarious how he manages to mirror Black without realising it. ‘Let’s finish packing up and head out.’

Lance waits for Pidge to glance his way before he angles his wrist to check his non-existent watch. She rolls her eyes hard enough to strain something. She doesn’t seem to find the joke funny but she’s also the only one who reacts to it. It practically belongs to her, now.

‘Pull your weight,’ she says, tossing him one of the fold-out chairs Coran stowed away.

‘I’m trying,’ Lance gasps, sinking into the chair. ‘There’s just so much muscle, I can’t—’

‘You weigh ninety pounds soaking wet.’

‘Says you, Pidgeon.’

A shadow falls across his lap—he squints up at Keith’s blank face. ‘Guys,’ he says, trying to pull off stern and casual all at once.

Lance slides all the way out of his chair and lies there, pouting. Keith pays him a few ticks of attention, then adds the chair to the pile of crap in his arms.

Pidge clasps her hands under her chin and flutters her eyelashes.

Lance decides to help Allura instead.

Even though she could probably lift Shiro with one hand and Hunk with the other, he insists on carrying the heavier water tank up Blue’s ramp. ‘Did you do road trips on Altea?’ This isn’t technically a road trip, due to lack of road, but still.

She considers the question for a moment. ‘People did take cross-country or cross-planet trips on Altea, but rather than fly, they travelled in land-bound ships.’

Lance smiles. ‘Hey, like Earth. We call ‘em cars. My family only did one road trip and then swore _never again_. It was fun, but it also sucked. We fought the whole time and I couldn’t feel my legs and Rachel gets carsick. I think my dad slept through the whole thing. It’s hard to call that a holiday with a straight face.’

Allura’s mouth lifts, but it’s not quite a smile. ‘My family had duties to attend to. We took plenty of trips, but not many holidays.’ She gestures to a gap among stores of water, food and medicines for his tank. Blue’s chest is basically an icebox and they treat it as such.

‘Oh. We better make this one a good one then, huh?’

She nods, frown in place.

‘I told you about Christmas, right?’ She nods again. ‘Man, missing so many is criminal. Like, my war crimes are as follows. Missing Christmas ’14. Missing Christmas ’15. Missing—’

‘It’s a holiday, correct?’

‘And more. Seriously, as soon as we land on a snowy planet—’

_ ‘What is in your mouth?!’_

Lance is almost disappointed to find out who Keith is talking to. The hulking wolf trots towards his owner, tail thwapping with all the might of a truck. That thing leaves bruises, as the team quickly found out.

‘Drop,’ he demands. The wolf spits something small and white at his feet, still wagging proudly.

Krolia asks over her shoulder, ‘Is he collecting again?’

‘Hm.’

The quiet draws even Shiro’s focus. ‘Keith?’

He tosses the offering. Shiro has to drop the box he’s carrying to catch it. Lance can see Keith’s cheeks darkening from across the clearing. ‘Sorry! I—it looks like a mug.’

Pidge pretends not to be interested. ‘We’ve seen utensils on plenty of planets.’

‘It’s got writing on it,’ Shiro announces.

‘Chuck,’ Lance demands, jogging towards the action. The wolf watches the mug change hands uneasily, nose twitching.

Keith is right. It’s crappy polished ceramics, distinctly mug shaped. Shiro is right, too; near the top is an ‘a’, and under it, slightly smaller, a ‘u’ and a ‘ve’.

‘Coran, what does a u v e spell in Altean?’

‘The alphabet doesn’t translate,’ Pidge and Hunk chorus tiredly. Coran makes a choking noise that might be a word the translator can’t decipher but could also be him clearing his throat. It’s kind of amazing the team has been together this long without anyone but Pidge actually trying to learn Altean.

Lance peeks inside and immediately grimaces. A soft brown residue, somewhere between powder and liquid, rings the bottom. ‘It’s dirty.’

‘Chuck,’ says Pidge, AKA Little Miss Uninterested.

He makes the mistake of tipping it upside down, and the liquid speckles his other hand. ‘Ew! It’s wet!’ He wipes it off on his pants, sniffing the mug cautiously.

‘_Chuck_.’

Lance brings it to his mouth and dips his tongue inside.

Protests rise up from just about everyone, along the lines of _Lance, no _and _you dumbass _and _blaeugh—stop_and _oh god do not_. Even Coran looks a tad squeamish and he licked Yelmor spray.

Lance nods. ‘Coffee.’

‘Wash out your mouth!’ Hunk screams.

‘How many times do we have to tell you—’

Lance cuts Pidge off by brandishing the mug. ‘Guys, really. It’s coffee.’

‘It tastes like coffee,’ Shiro reasons. ‘It’s an alien substance. It could be anything.’

‘Poison,’ Hunk wheezes. ‘Goodbye, Lance. It’s been swell.’

‘You’re a chef, you big baby. You put questionable stuff in your mouth all the time.’

‘Yeah, after Coran IDs it!’

Lance tosses the mug—right over Pidge’s head—back to Keith. ‘Smell it. It’s coffee.’

He does sniff it, then announces, ‘I’ve never had coffee, so I wouldn’t know.’

Lance opens his mouth, because that doesn’t sit right with him, but Pidge butts in. ‘No one else ingest the weird brown shit.’

Everyone groans. ‘Shit?’ Hunk shakes his head. ‘Really?’

Keith hands it back to Shiro, slower this time. ‘You used to have six a day. What do you think?’

‘Not _six_—huh. It really does smell like coffee. If my memory’s correct, anyway.’

‘Hold on.’ Allura steps forward, immediately in control. ‘Are you saying your wolf teleported to Earth?’

All eyes swing to Keith.

‘No.’

Lance doesn’t notice the electric hope in the air until it fades away. The hairs on his arms relax and his shoulders slump.

‘That would’ve been convenient,’ Romelle grumbles. ‘No more _this Lion, Romelle, no, this Lion, Romelle_.’ She folds her arms.

Pursing his lips, Keith ignores that. ‘I think when he teleports, he uses the same energy he would physically travelling. That’s why he gets tired when he takes me with him or moves farther distances.’ He offers the wolf a consolatory pat. ‘He couldn’t get that far. The mug is just weird space junk.’

‘Unsanitary space junk,’ Krolia reminds everyone. Shiro drops the mug. Lance wipes his tongue on the back of his hand.

‘Okay.’ Just those few drops made his breath smells like coffee. ‘As nice as it would be to get home lickity split, we are on _holiday _now.’ He nudges Allura. ‘Road trip? Christmas? We’ll get home. There’s no rush.’

At the edge of his mind there’s a push, a discontent. Red rumbles softly.

She never stops moving. The fastest, the most agile, the most restless. She’s eager to get on the road. He sends her a silent apology.

Shiro nods. ‘Lance is right.’ Wow. Those words pack a punch these days. ‘Time is on our side for the first time since we started this. We should enjoy it while we can.’

Red groans again. Lance feels for her, but they have earned it. Years of non-stop stress have boiled down to this. It’s Keith who’s probably antsy, looking to bulldoze his way home the way he does everything else.

He turns to say so, but Keith is looking at Krolia. His lips part. He blinks. ‘Mom—’

His knees buckle as he steps towards her and he splays face-first on the micro-grass.

Lance reacts first, because he saw the whole thing. That is to say, he manages to open his mouth before Krolia tumbles to the ground too.

‘Keith!’ Shiro springs into action. Coran puts his doctor face on, far too serious for a moustache so goofy.

Lance’s legs go wobbly.

Lance dreams. Again.

‘What the fuck.’ The white void bears down on him, coupled with that same pressing wrongness and the dry taste of cinnamon.

But this time he was awake. He remembers packing, the family dog found a mug, the Koganes keeled over.

_ Aw, man. Your mom saw me give you mouth to mouth._

_ I think she’ll forgive you, considering—_

He is truly having the worst time, made more so by the sudden appearance of none other than Scary Space Mom.

Krolia brandishes a knife—not the Marmoran blade she shares with her son, Lance knows this for sure, but one with the same symbol—and pulls her lips back into a snarl. Her hair is loose and wild, falling over her eyes. She growls from deep in her chest, ‘I will not repeat myself. Where is my son?’

Lance, obviously, already has his hands up in surrender. ‘I don’t know! I didn’t do anything, I swear! Except lick the coffee mug, but—’

‘Dead, likely. Along with the rest.’

Lance freezes. He recognises that voice.

Iverson stands a few feet away, hands folded behind his back. Beside him, a greying woman with cropped hair and a charcoal uniform, also in parade rest.

No one is this unbothered in the face of a Galran mother. He knows from personal experience. There must be something he’s not seeing—shields, guards coming out the wazoo, _something_.

Oh. Also? Krolia is threatening Garrison officials. Who say Keith is dead, along with rest—of Voltron?

He forgot the rules of these stupid dreams. Speak no evil—just see, just hear.

‘_Hey!_Wha’d’you think you’re doing?!’

Well, the other Lance can speak.

His scowling face only emerges when his shoulder clips Iverson’s, and then about five uniformed gunmen. Their uniforms are orange, their shoulders are bare—cadets.

He plants his feet in front of Krolia, facing down the firing squad. His bayard stays tucked in the back pocket of his jeans.

The jagged line of cadets—though Lance has no doubt the rows and columns are fuller than he can see—shift. They glance between the opposing parties. Iverson and the woman look uneasy, hands finally unclasped.

‘McClain,’ the Commander warns, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I asked you first!’

Krolia lowers her blade, just a tad.

The older woman speaks up. ‘Why are you defending this creature?’

‘She’s innocent, for one!’

The cadets break into murmurs. None of them is older than eighteen.

‘She’s Keith’s mother, for two, and part of Voltron.’

Jaws drop.

‘Quiet,’ says Iverson. One cadet gets to his feet, hands loose on his gun.

‘She’s _Galran_,’ the woman hisses. ‘An invader. Sendak—’

‘Was a monster. And an individual. There are good people, and bad. There are good Galra, too.’

The tip of Krolia’s blade dings the ground.

The cadet on his feet murmurs, ‘The Captain—’

Colour is swallowed by white is swallowed by black and Lance opens his eyes.

‘How the fuck would he _also_knock out two Galra by drinking alien coffee?’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time, Number Five.’

‘One an’ a half,’ Lance corrects.

‘Lance is awake!’ a pitchy voice announces. Hunk.

‘Keith, too.’

‘And Krolia.’

‘Krolia,’ Lance mimics the Princess’ accent. ‘Coh row leeee ahh.’ Hunk places a hand over his mouth and keeps it there until Lance jabs his fingers with his tongue. ‘I’m kidding. I’m fine.’

‘Fine? You just collapsed! That was horrible!’

‘For you and me both.’

He sits up, clawing Hunk’s bicep the entire time. He’s dizzier than he was last night. Not that—that—

Oh, fuck it. Something weird is going on. He can’t deny it after passing out in front of the whole—

_ Almost_the whole team.

Keith is already looking at him, supporting himself with an arm around Shiro’s shoulders. His face is unreadable. His eyes are sad, though. Aren’t they always?

Lance asks the question just by tightening his brows. _What is going on?_

He speaks to the team, but he doesn’t stop looking at Lance. ‘We need to talk about the Quantum Abyss.’


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance is pretty sick of these stupid dreams and everyone else is Panicking.

**Astronautics**

Krolia pulls her son to his feet, both of them seemingly physically able. Lance’s head is still spinning. ‘We need to increase our speed. Getting to Earth is top priority.’

He nods. ‘We can brief everyone on the way.’ He turns to his bewildered team. ‘To your Lions.’

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa—’

‘You can brief us now,’ Allura says sternly.

His face falls into its standard _we don’t have time for this _position, heavy as a thunderstorm. ‘Sendak is on Earth, or will be soon. Krolia’s right—we need to go.’

Lance leans into a stiffened Hunk, face falling into his hands. It’s true. Keith and Krolia saw his dreams—they believe them.

Shiro repeats, ‘Sendak’s on Earth?’

‘How could you possibly know that?’

Romelle hedges, ‘Who’s Sendak?’

‘Galra dude,’ Lance groans into his palms. ‘All round bad guy. Doesn’t like us much.’

‘Our _families _are on Earth.’

‘Matt would know if Earth was in danger,’ Pidge stresses. ‘He’d protect it. He’d _find _us.’

‘But we’ve been silent for three years! The rebellion was falling apart back then—_now…? _You think it can protect a whole planet? Without Voltron?’

‘The Coalition is strong!’

‘_Was—’ _

‘How did he even find it? Earth is meant to be out of reach.’

‘The Galra have found Earth before. Multiple times,’ Krolia reminds them.

‘That’s enough,’ Allura commands.

Coran’s frown deepens. ‘I think you’d best explain, Number Four.’

Keith looks frustrated. Well, to the untrained eye he looks frustrated almost constantly. This is _real _frustrated Keith, though—eyes on the ground, pacing, brushing off Shiro’s worried hand. Trying to figure out a way around—an escape.

Lance looks at Krolia and catches the moment she decides to speak up. ‘Planets and stars in the Quantum Abyss orbit a single dark star—that star has been expanding for thousands of years by drawing in everything that gets too close. The gravitational pull of the celestial bodies being destroyed distorts direction and fractures time.’ Pidge miraculously restrains herself. ‘While Keith and I made our way to the Altean colony, we encountered ruptures, of sorts. Emissions from white holes created by the star. We saw shared visions of our pasts, and occasionally the future.’

‘Visions?’ Coran repeats.

‘Of the future,’ Allura echoes.

Shiro rubs rough circles into his temples. ‘Sure. This might as well happen.’ His fingers change direction. ‘Aliens. Magic robots. Time travel. Why not?’

Lance mumbles, ‘Not like it’s the first time. You were a clone then, though.’

‘It’s not exactly time travel,’ Krolia muses. ‘Just interactions with foreign time-space. The visions appear like memories—untouchable, unalterable. They grew more intense the closer we came to the star, and slowed down when we left. Until recently, we’d believed they’d stopped altogether.’ She looks at Lance.

Hunk prompts, ‘Recently, like—?’

‘Last night,’ Keith confirms. He is decidedly _not_looking at Lance.

Hands clasped and tapping her chin, Pidge finally cracks. ‘Okay. Okay. Visions. White hole emissions. Okay. I’m trying to—were they _real_, is all I’m saying. You’re sure they weren’t just memories? Or hallucinations?’

Krolia tears her eyes away to frown at her son. ‘The glimpses of the past were all real.’

‘And the future?’

Keith looks at Shiro, too quickly to be accidental but too unguarded to be on purpose. ‘Some of them have already come true. I couldn’t say for sure, but—’ He shrugs. ‘In the Abyss, they were harder to figure out. These ones are different, more straightforward.’ 

‘So this just now—’

‘Yes. But it wasn’t my future, it was Krolia’s.’ He blinks, gaze finally sliding forwards again. ‘Or Lance’s.’

The attention of the group is on him all at once. He musters one finger gun and a click of his tongue.

‘And you know this because?’

‘I wasn’t in it. Not my memory.’

Hunk groans, ‘We’re seeing each other’s lives now? Isn’t that a massive invasion of privacy?’

‘Not like we can help it.’

‘Not _we _yet,’ Coran corrects, then, super helpfully, ‘just Keith and Krolia, which makes sense, and Lance, which doesn’t.’

Lance is glad he’s feeling chipper again, but also wishes he didn’t have to say things like that. As in, exactly what Lance is thinking.

Let’s be real—his brain is exploding. Visions of the future? Dark stars? It’s a lot to handle. They haven’t said so explicitly, but the dream last night—_your mom saw me give you mouth to mouth_—was the other vision, right? This is so messed up.

‘So,’ Shiro is brave enough to ask, ‘what did you guys see, then?’

Lance throws up his hands, passing on recounting the vision. Keith volunteers. ‘Krolia was looking for me. Iverson, General Sanda,’ he swaps a dark look with Shiro, ‘and a couple of Garrison cadets were there.’

‘A couple?’ Lance snorts. Keith sends him a glare that says _you tell the story, then_. He concedes.

‘They were hostile—said the Galra are invaders and mentioned Sendak. Lance got them to back off.’

The team takes a quiet moment to process. Lance figures they’re imagining the worst things Sendak can do. The Alteans are probably crippling under the blow to intergalactic goodwill. Though Keith skipped over it, Krolia is no doubt wondering about _dead, likely_.

Lance is worried about all that too, obviously. But also—was that almost praise from their esteemed Black Paladin? Surely not. No.

‘Well, maybe he hasn’t got there yet. Maybe he only gets there twenty years from now.’ Pidge looks around for support and finds very little.

Keith shakes his head. ‘Lance was too young for that. And the Garrison clearly hadn’t interacted with Galra outside the Empire before, they didn’t know who Krolia is or that I’m half Galra—' His mouth clicks closed as he takes in the team’s faces. ‘All we can do is get there as soon as possible.’ He watches Lance test his ability to stand on his own—the woozy feeling is gone, and he manages. ‘Let’s get going. If anyone has questions, you can ask over the comms.’

‘Wait—’ Pidges holds up an arm. ‘I’m gonna start recording the visions, okay? Time, place, content—so I can find the cause, any triggers. A solution, hopefully. If anyone has one, let me know. Could you guys fill me in on what you saw in the Abyss?’

‘No,’ they say in unison. Pidge blinks, taken aback. Keith hesitates. ‘Maybe one day, but—’ His mouth twists.

‘Fine,’ she says, scowling. Sometimes she forgets science has to be sacrificed for the sake of people.

Shiro claps his hands together, dispelling the tension as masterfully as ever. ‘Alright, team. Let’s get a move on.’

They’re ten doboshes from lift off—following a hasty packing of their assembled camp, including a three-person hunt for Kaltenecker—when Lance realises he has a stowaway.

‘Who invited you?’

The wolf blinks at him from the pilot’s chair, unaffected.

Despite his intimidating—and growing, Lance swears—size, he’s pretty cute. He’s like a Pokémon, and definitely one of the cuddlier ones. It’s been forever since Lance got to play with a dog—since before the Garrison. His habit of bowling Keith over hasn’t gotten old yet, either.

But Lance needs to fly, and he’s not doing it standing.

He claps his knees. ‘C’mon buddy. Time to move.’ He stretches his little(ish) toes, but otherwise doesn’t move. Lance intensifies his falsetto and bends over even more. ‘Back to Black! Let’s go!’ Nothing. Isn’t he supposed to be super smart, or something? Lance decides to use his normal voice—less patronising. ‘Let’s go see Keith, bud.’

Maybe it’s a trick of the light, but it almost looks like he rolls his eyes. Snarky overgrown pup.

Lance watches him toddle across the cockpit, in absolutely no hurry. ‘You gonna walk the whole way?’

The wolf side-eyes him, and then they’re both teleporting.

‘Um—’

Lance has been inside Keith’s bedroom a total of one time. This makeshift version is just as bare, with the addition of one-eighty pounds of smug wolf. Keith stands frozen, clutching a pile of blankets, face the picture of innocent confusion.

‘Uh, sorry. Your son is being a B-A-D boy.’ The wolf in question ducks behind his owner, cranking the puppy dog eyes.

Keith shakes his head. ‘What?’

‘Oh.’ He slaps a hand to his temple. ‘I meant the wolf, not—hey! Oh my god, did you get to see Leo? In the visions? In the Abyss?’ Lance really missed out on some prime teasing material considering Keith left almost right after that whole thing.

Keith’s hands tighten on his blanket pile. Lance takes a guilty step back. He’s overtalking the poor guy already. Insult his dog, remind him of the traumatising new connection they share, ask him about his possible-probable-definite-future kid? Jeez. Foot meet mouth.

‘I don’t think that’s his name,’ Keith says slowly.

Despite _just _giving himself a talking to about being too “on” to handle, Lance launches right back into blabbing. ‘That doesn’t answer the question. Anyway, until we find out his real name, we don’t have anything else to call him. Speaking of names, I’m getting real sick of calling this poor guy “wolf”—’

‘I do know his name.’ He opens his mouth and clamps it shut just as quickly.

Lance blinks. ‘What?’ The grin spreads before he can stop it. It’s been forever since they met future-Keith and future-Keith’s future-kid, and it’s been even _longer _since Lance got to really, truly babysit. He loves children—coming from a family with about a thousand—and Leo was adorable.

‘I saw him a few times,’ Keith explains.

‘And?’

‘And, what?’

‘What’s his name?’

Keith hesitates, which is annoying. Restraint isn’t in his nature until he has the opportunity to be annoying. ‘I don’t think I’m going to tell you.’

Which, um, _rude_. ‘What?! Why?’

Keith lays his pile on the bed, which upon further inspection is not blankets, but clothes. And a pair of shoes. And a creased, browning photograph that definitely isn’t Altean in make. Is this how he does laundry? No wonder even his skinny jeans manage to be wrinkled.

He catches Lance looking at the collection and shifts ever so slightly to cover it. His face is warm, his voice defensive. ‘Why did you lie to me this morning?’

Lance is taken back by the segue, but he does know exactly what Keith is talking about. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He folds his arms. ‘I asked if you had a nightmare. You said no.’

Fidgeting, Lance cuts his eyes to the wall. ‘Well, now I know it wasn’t technically a nightmare—’

Keith sighs, picks up a messy handful of clothes, and tosses it onto the floor of the storage closet-turned-wardrobe. ‘Lift off in eight doboshes, Lance.’

A dismissal if he’s ever heard one. He salutes Keith’s turned back, tongue sticking out.

When his fingers close around the joystick, Red purrs. She’s excited to be on the move, he can tell. Meandering around the past few weeks—conserving energy and supplies while they searched for a next step—hasn’t suited her.

Lance pats his armrest. ‘Okay, my beautiful baby girl, let’s do it.’

‘Comms are on, Lance,’ says Allura. Over his shoulder, Shiro clears his throat.

‘Sor_ry_. Fun police.’ He leans forward even as the force of exiting the atmosphere pushes him back into his chair. ‘Are we training right now?’

BLACK’s line lights up with Krolia’s voice. ‘Not yet. Once we’re deeper into—'

‘Great!’ He disconnects.

They’ve been switching passengers at every stop since the “Coran and Krolia 1v1” incident. Lance mostly gets stuck with the animals, which is fine, but it’s nice to have company who will talk back for once. He’s going to make the most of it.

He’s pondering the merits of twenty questions compared to Never Have I Ever when Shiro exhales heavily. ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you.’

He pauses, maybe to let Lance really fester in the anxiety. Which he does; his heart jams and his mouth goes cottony. That sentence is on the No Good Results list of “things to hear from a superior”.

When the moment stalls for too long, Lance says, ‘Shoot.’

He looks backwards. Shiro’s face is serious, his hair glowing pink under the cockpit lights. ‘I need to apologise for what happened under the clone’s influence.’

Lance waves a dismissive hand. Panicked for nothing. ‘Not necessary, man, but thanks. Forgiven.’

‘That wasn’t the apology.’

‘Oh.’ Lance slowly relaxes their upwards trajectory as they leave the sky behind, and Red’s centre of gravity tilts. Shiro takes the chance to latch onto the back of the chair with one hand.

‘I’m sorry for being a bad leader.’

‘You weren’t—’

‘I’m sorry for pushing you to stop being yourself. I want you to know that your voice is always welcome on this team.’

‘Really, Shiro, you don’t have to—’

‘Yes, I do. I’m sorry for pushing Keith to choose between us and his heritage.’ He smiles, just a little. ‘I know he didn’t want it—wasn’t ready—but I think Voltron was at its strongest point for a while, with you two in charge. You guys did really well despite the circumstances, and I’m proud of you for that. It couldn’t have been easy.’

Lance’s throat clogs. Look, it’s not like he _craves _praise and validation, but—it’s been a while, okay?

‘And I’m sorry for taking that away from you.’ He slaps the chair, eyes widening. ‘And I’m sorry for punching you in the face. Jesus Christ.’

Lance laughs. ‘Okay, it did hurt like a bitch, I’ll give you that. At least it wasn’t the metal fist.’

Silence answers him. He glances over his shoulder again—Shiro’s eyes are foggy. Not like when he lost control, but like before—when he’d remember being the Champion, when they’d finish training early or when Keith would refuse to watch chariot races or musical performances if they were in anything vaguely resembling a football stadium, dragging Shiro back to the markets or a library.

Lance always whined and complained about that. Always made a comment about how he hated fun or killed the mood. He didn’t realise until Keith left—until the duty was unattended to, until the necessity became clear, until it started being _his _job to nudge everyone in a different direction or throw a tantrum to cut training short—that he was watching out for Shiro. Making sacrifices left and right, as per usual. Under the torrent of Lance’s petty arguments, as per usual.

‘Shiro?’ Lance asks gently.

He blinks the fog away. ‘Did Keith—did he explain what happened when...?’ His fingers tighten on the chair.

‘What happened on the other side of that wormhole?’ Shiro’s frown deepens, and he nods once. Lance chooses his words carefully. ‘He didn’t.’ There wasn’t time, what with Lotor and the Castle and then Shiro almost dying. It’s been non-stop until recently, and now they’re back on their Busy Bullshit. ‘We got the gist, though. You’re down an arm, he’s down a cheek.’ He smiles as reassuringly as he can. ‘It’s not really a big secret, but it doesn’t matter to us unless you need to talk about it, okay?’

Shiro raises an eyebrow. ‘Really?’

Lance scoffs, ‘Just ‘cause you’re our leader, doesn’t mean you don’t need a half-assed therapy session. Any time, Shiro, I mean it.’

His fingers loosen their clamp on the chair, whether because he’s relaxing or because Lance stopped accelerating accidentally, it’s unclear. He smiles—his ears stick out even more when he does. It makes him look younger. Even with the grandpa hair. ‘Thank you, Lance. That means a lot.’

Lance tilts his head. ‘Are you going to take up that offer, or...?’

‘Maybe.’ He ducks his head. ‘Probably not for a while. I don’t want—’

‘If you say _to burden us, _we’re gonna have to fight again.’ Shiro chuckles, but he doesn’t meet his eye. Lance bumps his (holy hell is it so frickin'—) ginormous bicep with a fist. ‘Seriously, man. I can handle it. Lay it on me. We’re friends.’

‘Thought I was Space Dad?’

He remembers their game of Monsters and Mania. It wasn’t quite Shiro, then, but he’d looked as young as the rest of them. Having fun, even if he framed it as “team building skills” or whatever. Before he even thinks about it, he’s saying, ‘You’re our friend first and most importantly. That’s why we have a handshake.’

Shiro mostly looks bemused. ‘We don’t have a handshake.’

Lance crosses his arms, smug smile forming. ‘Astute observation, Capitán. We can remedy that immediately.’

He holds out his left hand. It’s his weaker, less-coordinated hand, but Shiro doesn’t exactly have the option.

‘A handshake?’

Lance nods a little more aggressively. ‘Trust me on this.’

Even though they’ll forget it within the week, it’s a necessary part of every friendship.

Whether he’s humouring him or not, he counts it as a victory when Shiro tries his best to mimic the random moves Lance throws his way. ‘I haven’t done a secret handshake since kindergarten.’

Lance feels Red tilt ever so slightly. He corrects her with a toe on the joystick. ‘Luckily, you’re learning from the best.’

He smiles sceptically. ‘The best hand shaker?’

Lance finger guns. ‘You got it.’

‘The finger guns aren’t going in there, are they?’

He grins. ‘Well, _now _they are.’

Eight point something vargas in—Lance has been piloting with one hand and trying to roll a coin over his knuckles with the other, suffice to say he hasn’t been watching the clock—the comms ping. Lance’s coin goes flying, probably gone forever now, and Shiro wakes up with one last snore.

Never let it be said that Lance has no compassion. He’s been listening to that for the past hour or so and hasn’t said a word.

Shiro is better at reading and understanding Altean analogue clocks, so he calculates the time first. ‘A little early for another check in.’

‘Not a check in,’ Pidge says grimly. ‘We’ve got Galra activity up ahead.’

‘Already? Do we know who? Acxa said the Empire split into factions.’

‘No way to tell from here.’ She sighs. ‘My Galra-finder didn’t pick them up at all—’

‘Galra-finder?’ Keith interrupts. ‘That’s a thing now?’

‘Not anymore. It’s really just predictive technology based on the Empire’s past movements and communications. Now that there _isn’t_an Empire, it’s pretty useless.’

‘We’re in bandit country now,’ Lance drawls. He’s been trying to draw a reaction from Keith and Krolia with the Texan accent for a while now, but so far, no cigar.

‘Essentially,’ Pidge agrees. ‘We’ll just have to keep a closer eye on the scanners from now on. My bad, guys.’

Shiro leans in. ‘Not your fault. We caught this one early enough to loop around. No harm done.’

‘Wait,’ Allura says. ‘Pidge, would data from that ship help you rebuild your Galra-finder?’

‘Ah—yes, actually. It would.’

Keith’s voice is contemplative. ‘You think we should go in?’

The silence is confirmation enough.

‘Wait, wait. We _just _said getting to Earth is our top priority,’ Hunk protests. ‘Isn’t this kind of like, wasting valuable time?’

‘This is our chance to see what’s going on from the inside,’ Pidge argues.

‘Um, we _know _what’s going on. Sendak’s on Earth! Y’know, our home? We should just slip around.’

‘The data on that ship is going to make getting home a thousand times easier. If we get it, I can plot a course that avoids contact with the Galra from here on out.’

Something about that idea twangs a nerve in Lance’s gut. He hadn’t considered the fact that rushing to Earth would mean avoiding the rest of their duties—are they skimping on the planet-saving, now? To save themselves? Well, and the entirety of Earth.

The thought still makes him cringe, just a little.

‘That’s assuming this ship even has info on other faction locations and movements. And that’s another thing—_on _the ship. We don’t have the Castle, can’t contact the rebellion—if we get in trouble, we’re dead in the water. It’s a suicide mission.’

‘No,’ Keith cuts in. ‘We don’t have to destroy it. They don’t even have to know we were there. Get in, disable as much as we can, and get out.’

‘An infiltration mission,’ Krolia murmurs.

‘That means sending in, what, three people on their own? Guys, I have a really bad feeling about this. We don’t exactly have the best track record for successful sneaking!’

‘Blade missions were always three people,’ Krolia informs them mildly.

‘Yeah, and look at the turnover rate!’

The line goes quiet.

Keith was very hesitant to cut back on Blade missions, back when he was juggling them alongside Voltron. He didn’t talk much about what he did, but the team found out through other sources—Kolivan, the gossip mill, etcetera—about the death of Regris, who’d mentored him. After he left for good, and the Blade thought them entitled to the occasional report on account of their alliance, every death was more worrying than the last. Every report could have had Keith’s name stamped at the bottom alongside five or six others.

‘Sorry. That was harsh,’ Hunk admits quietly. ‘But it’s true.’

‘We’re not the Blade,’ Keith says firmly. ‘We don’t operate the same way. I’ll go down there because I trust you guys to get me out.’

Predictably, Pidge insists, ‘I’m going too.’

Lance catches Shiro with a soft glare at his empty shoulder. He’d never ask any of the Paladins to put themselves in danger in his place, but that can’t and won’t stop Lance offering. ‘Me, too.’

‘Ugh,’ Hunk groans, ‘_fine_, okay.’

‘So we’re in agreement?’ Keith waits for protests, but none come. ‘Okay. Lance and I will get Pidge to—’

‘You can’t,’ Krolia says quickly. The pause in conversation suggests they’re swapping their secret-magic-mother-son eye words. ‘If you have another vision, Pidge will be left defenceless and have to protect you both.’

‘We could bring the wolf,’ Lance suggests. He loves that mutt and all his insane abilities. Especially that the science behind it alludes and pisses Pidge off so much.

‘Could work. But he’s never teleported three people at once before, and not during battle, if it comes to that.’

It always comes to that.

Lance looks at Shiro, figuring he must be bursting at the seams to provide his experienced input. Instead, he’s nodding down at the comms. He turns when he senses Lance’s gaze and sends him a tiny smile, mouths _give him a tick._

‘Okay. Pidge and I will go in with the wolf. Lance and Hunk will guard the Green Lion. Allura will be in Blue in case we need extraction.’

‘If something goes wrong, we have one Lion,’ Hunk points out.

‘Your Lions will come if you call.’

It’s true for Keith, but neither Blue nor Red have ever come to save Lance.

Everyone but Pidge is uneasy. Lance never liked being a watch dog, even if that’s his whole job as a sniper. It isn’t terrible, granted, but since he’s had a taste of sword fighting, it’s hard not to be in the action with the rest of his team.

‘Okay,’ Hunk says slowly, ‘it’s your call, man.’

It sounds like an accusation.

They leave their Lions, passengers, and Allura behind on a planetoid so dusty and red that if it weren’t for how positively tiny it is—like, visibly-curved-horizon, take-a-stroll-and-watch-forty-four-sunsets tiny—Lance would mistake it for the old, _old _pictures of Mars in the history textbooks. They’d always been a little more romantic than the newer ones, in his opinion—grainer, lonelier, empty but for the sun and the stars and the endless red. The newer photos are less dusky. Colonised.

(He chooses to ignore that, likely, he hasn’t even _seen _the newer photos. What colour is Mars now? What’s the date back on Earth? Is he really so detached from his home that he doesn’t know the number down to the second?)

‘You gonna be alright?’ he asks Shiro as he puts on his helmet.

‘Yeah. I wish I could be there with you, but…’ He shrugs his empty shoulder.

Lance steps towards his ride, the wolf, mouth twisted in sympathy. ‘Back in a flash.’

Thankfully, the Green Lion makes quick work of the distance. The cockpit is a tight squeeze, but Pidge threatens death on anyone who so much as breathes on her tape-and-spit lab or personal belongings.

The cruiser comes into sight from around a split asteroid.

‘Hole or hangar?’

‘As close to the bridge as possible,’ Hunk begs. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

‘We’re not going to the bridge,’ Keith says. He leans towards the dashboard, fingers splayed, only to freeze. ‘Uh, right. Pidge, could you do a scan for the server room?’

She cuts her eyes his way, narrowed in suspicion. ‘Duh. But that’s a lot of data to sift through, not to mention translate. It’s gonna take twice as long, at least.’

Keith holds up a tiny silver rectangle, no bigger than a fingernail. ‘A gift from the Blade.’

She snatches it from him, peering at it closely. Its appearance reveals nothing to Lance, but she seems excited. ‘It’s an external hard drive?’

‘You can just say USB,’ Lance says flatly.

‘Yes,’ Keith agrees. He doesn’t specify to which.

‘How much storage?’

‘Hecka.’

‘Nine exabytes.’

‘Hecka,’ Lance repeats. Pidge looks a little manic.

‘Marmorites sure are excessive,’ Hunk mumbles.

‘Anything on there now I should save while I can?’

Keith looks out over the approaching cruiser. ‘A couple of photos. You can delete them.’

Her eyes flit to Lance and Hunk, just to double check that yes, they all totally got those big sad vibes just now. ‘You sure? Green could hold onto—’

‘No, it’s okay. I haven’t seen them in two years anyway.’

Yep. Big sad vibes.

‘I’ll just do that scan, then.’

Pidge parks in a very underused hangar. Like, dust-covered. Lance and Hunk sit on Green’s front paw and watch the doors, but there isn’t much to do. Keith’s space pet is truly their greatest Deus ex Machina, and they fly five robot Lions who converge into one almighty robot man, so that’s saying something.

Lance entertains himself by swinging his legs back and forth and tapping a beat onto the handle of his bayard. He mouths the words to a half-remembered song.

When they’re back on Earth, he’ll look it up again. Sing the second verse—which he can’t remember for the life of him—for nostalgia’s sake.

‘Please stop singing,’ Hunk whines.

Lance rolls his eyes. ‘Oh, you’re right. Wouldn’t wanna get caught.’ He nods at the empty room.

Hunk throws his hands out and hisses, ‘I think that’s a reasonable request.’

Lance stands. ‘No, you’re right. Wouldn’t want the Galra to see me do _this_.’ He poses, one hand under his chin, the other fluttering above his head.

Hunk knocks his fist against his forehead. ‘Oh, Lance.’

‘Or _this_.’ He attempts a ballet move he might have seen either in a Barbie movie or a fever dream. Hunk doesn’t offer a reaction, so he doesn’t know if he succeeds.

‘On our way back,’ Pidge whispers over the comms.

‘This just in! The Red Paladin does _yoga_.’ He demonstrates, head almost on the floor, one foot in the air.

‘Wait, okay—so we’re definitely going with Red Paladin, now?’

Lance groans, ‘Hunk! Yes! I’ve been the Red Paladin for freaking forever now!’

‘I’m just checking! You’re in Blue armour!’

‘Ugh, you sound just like Supreme Countess Syvnerina—oh, shit.’ His bayard is in his hands and shooting a second later.

Hunk jumps to his feet. ‘Uh oh!’

It’s just a couple of sentries, nothing they can’t handle even without Keith and Pidge. Still, it would be better to take them down before they raise some kind of alarm. ‘Guys, we’ve got company in the bay from the—left.’

‘Can’t use left and right on a spaceship, Lance,’ Hunk reminds him, pitch rising. He’s doing a decent job mowing them down, but he still tends to get panicky when his life is in danger.

‘We’re coming in hot,’ Pidge says.

‘Wha—did you not hear me? Sentries in the bay?’

‘And chasing us.’

Keith cuts in, the yell making the comms twinge. ‘For fuck’s sake, Pidge—ditch the grenade!’

Where the hell did she get a—?

There’s a flash and the trio are crouching by the door. The sound of caving metal and gunpowder follows, and the wall behind them groans.

They waste no time recovering.

The team makes good progress—Hunk and Lance taking out the majority from a distance, Keith and his wolf swooping in to catch the stragglers—until the second door opens and flesh-and-blood soldiers flow through.

‘Hunk, stay where you are. Lance, on me.’

‘You got it, boss.’

Lance tries to neutralise them before they’re in Keith’s vicinity, but it doesn’t help that he frickin’ teleports into the fray every two seconds. When the soldiers pull out guns and start aiming back, Lance has to shift his priorities.

There’s a flash to his left, close enough to stun him for a moment. He whips around, one eye scrunched closed, to see the wolf shredding a sentry. ‘Thanks, buddy!’

He looks for Keith—his advantage being gone, he’s more vulnerable. Not, like, _very_, but enough that Lance should look out for him instead of gaping at the robot who nearly shot his brains out point-blank.

Predictably, Keith is doing just fine. Fluid and shadow-shaped, he takes on more than his fair share without so much as breaking a sweat. Pidge is similarly wrapped up, her usual bayard form replaced with her recently discovered kusarigama.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees a sentry and Galra, bearing down on Hunk. His bayard shifts before he really wills it too. He lifts the blaster to aim right as a sword comes swinging at him. It catches the underside of the barrel—he struggles to hold his grip as it sends his bayard swinging back to smack his visor. He takes a step to brace himself, tries to get the gun out in front of him—but now it’s a sword, just barely of his own volition. Good timing, too—he blocks another blow, skittering backwards under the force, then returns it harder and faster. The sentry isn’t much tougher than the gladiator on the Castle, but it does cost him precious time to take down.

By the time he’s yanking his rifle back around to defend Hunk, Keith is holding both attackers off. Lance doesn’t even see him move, just watches the sentry hit the ground. The Galra raises his gun, teeth bared.

‘Try it,’ Keith spits, the growl in his chest full throttle.

The Galra goes to take the invitation despite the clear threat and Lance takes him down. Keith finds him.

‘Time to go,’ Lance calls. Keith nods, pushes Hunk ahead of him, and the team converges on Green.

Allura’s anxious voice is small in Lance’s loud, loud head. ‘Keith, do you need cover?’

‘We’re good, Allura, thank you.’ He looks over the team. ‘Everyone okay?’

He’s met with a series of nods, and wide eyes from Hunk. Lance digs his nails into the wolf’s scruff as Pidge slings Green into space.

‘You’re _such _a good boy! Hey, beautiful boy?’ The wolf nudges him just a little too hard and he falls backwards, splaying his legs out. He climbs into Lance’s lap as closely as possible, tail wreaking havoc. ‘You’re my favourite, yes you are! So gorgeous!’

Over the comms, Shiro mumbles, ‘Who’s he talking to?’

‘The dog,’ Hunk says, dazed.

‘The dog.’ Pidge wrinkles her nose.

Lance needs the first two for reference, or he might have missed the laughing lilt to Keith’s voice. ‘The dog.’

Scratch that earlier comment. Keith _is _sweating—it beads on his forehead and glues his bangs to his skin in dark spikes. He’s all, like, glittery somehow.

‘Good work, guys. Pidge, do you need anything to help decipher the data?’

‘Twelve hours of silence.’

He nods. ‘We can give you that.’

Lance claps a hand on his shoulder. ‘That was a joke, bud.’

Pidge shoots him a dirty look. ‘On second thought, keep him away from me. That’s enough.’

Lance makes a noise in protest. Something like, ‘Aauegh?!’

‘Get the hell out of my cockpit, McClain.’

He sticks up his nose. ‘Don’t get a shred of respect in this family. I am the _backbone _of this household, and yet—’

Shiro blinks at him.

With a sigh, Lance loops his fingers around the wolf’s snout. He wags his tail, all sweet doggy innocence.

‘You have no sense of dramatic timing, you know that?’

He yips, squirms out of Lance’s hand and teleports back to Green to continue his delivery service.

Shiro is sitting cross-legged, hand in his lap. He closes his eyes. ‘Mission went well?’

Lance shrugs. ‘Another day, another dollar. What are you doing?’

‘Meditating.’ Even without looking he gives Lance an impressive _don’t start _look.

Lance starts. ‘Like an old man. Or a hipster.’

He exhales very slowly, very loudly. In his deepest, most Zen voice, he asks, ‘You know Keith is almost as old as I was when we left Earth? Coran is _hundreds _of years old, technically thousands. Even you’re growing up. I am not the only old man on this team.’

Lance hadn’t thought about it like that before—damn, they really are getting old—but he still leans back in his chair and sniffs, ‘Age isn’t what makes you geriatric, your attitude is.’

He exhales. Very slowly, very loudly.

‘Okay,’ he whispers the next day over lunch and the soft sound of Shiro’s snores, ‘It’s totally unacceptable that you’ve known us this long and _haven’t _heard about Area 51.’

Romelle cocks her head. ‘We only met a few weeks ago.’

‘And there are enough space nerds on the expedition that it should’ve come up in that time!’ He peels off a slice of whatever-the-hell, a sweet kind-of-fruit with odd, popping-candy seeds. ‘Not to mention Keith, the biggest conspiracy theorist to walk time and space.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t heard of it either,’ Allura admits, grimacing. ‘Must you eat with your mouth open?’

He’s excited, okay?

He swallows purposefully. ‘Basically, it was this big secret government base where they hid all the aliens.’

Allura’s eyes widen. ‘I thought Earth never made contact with—’

‘Theoretically,’ he adds, wielding another slice of whatever-the-hell. ‘Government secret. No proof, unfortunately.’

‘So,’ Romelle asks, swapping a worried look with the Princess, ‘the humans will be taking _us _to this—facility?’

Lance hardcore cringes, remembering too late the world she just escaped from. ‘No! No, don’t worry. Earth is gonna love you guys, I know it. Alien Princess, Alien Supermodel.’ Allura rolls her eyes. ‘And Coran, of course. There are gonna be memes galore about him, trust me on that.’ His whatever-the-hell waving flicks juice right through the hologram and onto the dash. Lance wipes it away with his glove before Red can complain. ‘Besides, Area 51 was destroyed in World War III. The Garrison is there, now.’

‘Three World Wars?’ Allura gapes. ‘You must have had quite the incompetent King and Queen.’

‘Oh, it’s—well, okay, you’re not wrong. We’ve had our fair share. But Earth isn’t run by just the one guy. Actually, like—hundreds of guys. All in charge of their own countries and groups of countries and towns and yadda yadda.’

Allura nods thoughtfully, her intergalactic diplomacy having landed on her on such planets before, but Romelle gapes. ‘That hardly sounds practical! No wonder you have so many wars.’

Lance doesn’t point out the disadvantage of having one single ruler for hundreds of years, a la Lotor, a la Zarkon. He doesn’t really know how to sum up Earth’s entire history in the neat way Coran always does about Altea—the fact is, Earth’s history is messy and confusing and he doesn’t know even one percent off by heart. He also doesn’t know what’s happened since he left—hell, maybe Earth only does have a single leader now, and maybe it’s Sendak.

Ouch. Too soon.

‘Yeah,’ is what he lands on.

The Princess seems to have been similarly lost in thought. ‘Perhaps Earth is not as similar to Altea as we hoped,’ she murmurs. Romelle’s ears almost seem to droop.

‘No, guys,’ Lance says forcefully, a little too loud. He lowers his voice. ‘Earth is gonna love you and respect you, I promise. I’ve seen the future, remember?’

Romelle perks up a little, and Allura’s mouth drifts upwards gratefully.

Lance decides not to mention what he saw in the vision. The venom in Iverson’s eye when he looked at Krolia. Figures it isn’t helpful that he doesn’t actually have any solid idea of how Voltron will be received at all, or that to his knowledge the US government has a tendency to strap things down and scalpel them open when possible. He just leaves them with the promise that they’ll be safe, be home.

He’ll make sure of it.

There’s a soft ding. Lance takes his heels off the dash—BLACK is hailing him. ‘’Scuse me, ladies. Duty calls.’ He leans back again, sure to cross his feet in view of the camera. ‘Keithy. Hit me.’

‘La—oh. Hi, Allura. Romelle.’

‘Hello.’ Lance looks around his boots at the Princess. ‘Yes, we’re still here.’

‘Good_bye_,’ he says, shutting off the Blue Lion with a firm button push and pink cheeks.

Keith is looking at something below the camera’s view. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt—whatever that was.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’m just teaching them a couple things so they’re not, like, culture-shocked when we get to Earth.’

Keith nods slowly. ‘That’s smart. I didn’t think of that.’

‘Yeah, it is a bit.’ It’s hard to puff out his chest in a slouch but Lance gives it a go. ‘We were talking about conspiracy theories, actually. Could’ve used your backup.’

‘Don’t misinform—oh.’ He tilts his head.

‘What?’ Lance asks after a full dobosh of no follow-up. He watched the clock.

'Just figured something out, is all.'

Again, Lance waits an obscene length of time for clarification. 'Okay? And? That was?'

He shrugs, still fiddling with something off-screen. ‘You and Allura didn’t get together this year.’

How he came to that conclusion, Lance is baffled. How he’s been under a contrary impression for the last month—maybe Lance should stop trying to figure out how his brain works. It’s exhausting.

He rubs the back of his neck. ‘Ah, no, man. She had like, a huge thing for Lotor. With Lotor. You didn’t hear about that?’

‘I just got the basics. No one filled me in on the gossip.’

Lance sinks lower in his chair. ‘Well, you came to right place.’ He throws an accusing finger in the camera’s direction. ‘But tit for tat! Tell me all your news, too.’

Keith doesn’t really need to know the gossipy side of Voltron’s time without him. It’s pretty pathetic when it’s all laid out—Allura was galivanting, being magical and romantic with Lotor; Lance was pining, loudly and often; Shiro was in hell, maybe purgatory, while his clone had migraines and yelled at people; Hunk did some sketchy “educational” BDSM-ing with an old Galra lady; and Pidge was off, what—being smart? Lance tends to zone out when she talks about her day, if he’s being entirely honest.

Nothing too far from the usual. Nothing in particular that needs to be brought to Keith’s attention.

‘News?’ Keith’s eyes cut to the side. ‘I found my mother? And an Altean? And a wolf? That’s kind of it.’

Lance puts his chin in his palm and his elbow on the arm of the chair, face a picture of disappointment. ‘Duh. I mean the juicy stuff. Two years is a long time! Tell me what _happened_. Your mom is great at impressions. You found out Keith is Galran for “Emo One.” You saw me, rich and famous, in a vision of the future.’ After a moment of silence, Keith gives him a stiff shrug. ‘Anything?’

‘Not much to tell.’ Lance sighs, sinks in his chair. Keith sucks in a deep breath—once, twice, three times. Lance almost snaps at him to spit it out when he finally does. ‘Actually, the visions are what I wanted to talk to you about.’

Lance sits right back up and tucks his feet under himself. Finally. Ever since he found out Keith has seen the future and past, he’s been freakin’ dying to hear about it.

‘I’m sorry you got dragged into it.’ His gaze is back on his hands. ‘I don’t know _how _you got dragged into it, but obviously you did...’ He scrubs a palm over one eye. ‘Whatever. I just—I know they can suck sometimes. So I wanted to ask if you’re freaking out.’

Lance cocks his head. Keith is worried about him—which is fair, he’s got a team to run, and he needs it in tip-top shape. And, look, he might act like it, but Lance isn’t _totally _obtuse. He knows they’re friends—whatever weird, uncomfortable version of friendship Keith is subscribed to. They couldn’t have gone through everything they’ve been through and not care about each other.

What strikes him as weird is that Keith is apologising. Again. For something that isn’t his fault! Shiro used to have to drag him by the collar and practically feed him kind words and confessions of bad behaviour for things he actually _was _at fault for.

Seriously—what the hell happened on that whale?

‘It was a little creepy at first, I guess.’ He scratches his cheek, mind wandering back to the visions. ‘I don’t really like watching myself from the outside. Or being invisible. Or being walked through. Blacking out in the middle of a conversation isn’t great, either. I dunno. They’ll probably be worse now I know they’re real.’

Keith nods. He might’ve grown, but with his shoulders hunched, he doesn’t fill out his chair. ‘We didn’t really black out like that in the Abyss, but yeah.’ He clears his throat. ‘Like I said—I know they can suck. So if you need to talk about them.’ He shrugs.

Lance tries not to smile.

He knows—used to be furious over it, but has since figured out that it’s how he had to grow up, that he didn’t have a choice once upon a time—Keith has to put real, conscious effort into making others comfortable before himself.

Lance tries not to smile, and he fails miserably. ‘Thanks, dude.’

‘Yeah,’ he mumbles.

‘Same goes for you, y’know.’ Keith hums. Laces his hands together. Lance wonders if he’s meant to ask about the sparring, and everything after. ‘I mean it,’ he says instead.

‘I know you do.’

Lance watches him. Waits for him to look up, which he doesn’t for quite a while. Almost long enough for it to be weird that Lance is still waiting for—what, exactly?

He can’t pin it down in its entirety, and he has the vague desire to cram a lid on it anyway.

But Keith is waiting for something, too. Lance can feel it.

Lance is scraping (delicious) dung-fungus-paste from his tongue when Pidge gasps, ‘A signal!’

‘How did you get a signal?’

‘Since we intercepted that cruiser, I’ve been running a passive scan—so I wouldn’t give our location away—looking for any signs of communications. And I just picked up something!’

Lance pouts down at his lunch. Looks like he’s not going to have time to mentally reprepare himself to eat it.

‘Well, what is it?’

‘I’m patching it through now.’

His video feed fizzles to life—the signal must be shaky as all hell, because it drops out a few times. He can feel Red’s impatience swell the longer it takes for the pixels to align into something discernible.

It’s a sitcom. Unmistakably. Red sighs around him. How does the Seinfeld formula span all of space but human rights don’t? Lance takes a weary bite of his wrap.

Coran completely loses it. His translation doesn’t help even a little.

‘Wait,’ Krolia rushes, ‘Pidge, can you amplify that signal?’

It screeches and scratches. Only a little worse than the TV show, honestly.

‘It’s just deep space interference.’

‘No—that’s just what it’s supposed to sound like. Listen to the sounds in-between the pulses. There’s a unique pattern.’

The comms quiet down. Lance isn’t sure he hears it, but Allura says, ‘She’s right.’

‘The Blades used to use this crude form of communication,’ Krolia explains. ‘Not many alive would know this code—it must be a senior member.’

‘Kolivan?’ Keith suggests, voice just barely edged with hope.

‘Or a dead end,’ Hunk says, ‘from a long time ago. There’s no time stamp.’

‘It’s a distress signal. Whoever is sending it is in trouble. The Blade doesn’t leave loose ends—no one would leave a live transmission open for longer than necessary. It’s a waste of resources.’

‘I didn’t think the Blade even had distress signals. I thought rescue missions were a no-go?’

Krolia pauses. ‘We used to be far fewer. Everything was different then.’

Keith bravely barrels through the tension that arrives anytime someone brings up the Blade’s less-than-stellar, not-exactly-Voltron-approved methods. ‘Can you find out where it’s coming from?’

There’s a _clack-clack_ of obnoxious typing. Lance takes another bite. ‘It looks like it’s coming from this sector. It’ll be easier to get an exact location the closer we get.’

The map she sends looks exactly like every other bit of space to Lance—starry, sunny, asteroidy. Everyone immediately has an opinion, though.

‘We have to go,’ Krolia demands, volume high.

Coran hedges, ‘Without the Castle’s library, we’ll be flying in blind.’

‘And it’s a pretty severe detour from Earth,’ Hunk argues.

‘If there are Blades there it’s worth it,’ Keith says firmly. ‘We’ll need all the help we can get to defeat Sendak. We need our allies.’

The ensuing silence is broken by Lance loudly dusting off his hands. He figures Red will probably appreciate crumbs in her controls even less than on the floor. ‘Lead the way, boss.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things I forgot to mention last time:  
\- do you think Stephen Hawking and the like are disappointed that I'm using their quotes for fanfiction?  
\- Red is gender fluid because yolo  
\- aaaahjvbuysbjevbhawjsfjv,krwyguvjbh it's so much harder to write when I have work... and uni... fire me...  
\- pls forgive weird doublewords likeso. idont knowwhy ao3hates meso damnmuch.
> 
> I forgot the one thing I said needed to mentioned with this chapter so I guess 'last time I forgot' is a new tradition.
> 
> (THIS IS WHY WE DON'T POST WITHOUT PREVIEW)


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